1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to miniature microscope miniature objectives that are intended to be assembled together into an array microscope including an array of many such miniature objectives.
2. Description of the Related Art
Array microscopes have been previously disclosed, e.g., in PCT patent publication No. WO 02/075370. In addition, miniature microscope objectives intended for assembly together to form an array microscope have also been previously disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/247,811 and 10/300,679.
Other miniature microscope miniature objective designs intended to be used individually have been disclosed in a number of publications. Most of such miniature objectives are used for endoscopic instruments. Among them are a miniature microscope miniature objective design by C. Liang, and described in Applied Optics, Vol. 41, No. 22. August 2002, which was particularly intended to be used for a fiber reflectance confocal microscope. A miniature microscope objective was designed by A. Gmitro and authors Sabharwal, et al. and published at Applied Optics, Vol. 38, No. 34, pp. 7133–7144, and was intended for a fluorescent confocal microscope. A further miniature microscope objective design published by authors Knittel et al. at Optics Communications, 188 (2001) 267–273, was also intended to be used for a fluorescent confocal microscope.
It is desired, however, to have a miniature microscope miniature objective designed for an array microscope. Such miniature objective may share some common characteristics as these other miniature microscope miniature objectives, but its design involves a set of first order properties that are unique as recognized in the present invention. It is desired to have a miniature objective design that, as nearly as possible, provides distortion free, diffraction limited image quality over one or more and preferably multiple narrow spectral bands centered at a broad range of visible wavelengths. In addition, it is desired for this miniature objective design to exhibit those properties which permit optimal use of the miniature objective in an array of such miniature objectives.